Last night, when I found my brand new Nokia 6230i on the doorstep, I did a little dance of joy. I was so excited at having such a shiny new mobile that can do almost anything except make coffee, but that feeling didn't last long. When I opened the package, I found that a 10cm phone is actually quite small. Worse, I found I had to assemble it first, and the instruction manual, being entirely written in French for no reason that I can discern, proved little help on that point. So I struggled with it for some hours, but being nervous as well as ham-fisted, I had to leave it after fitting in the SIM-card.

So I took it to work with me this morning, and after fruitlessly fiddling with it some more, one of my younger co-workers helpfully took it off me and within the space of 10 seconds, fitted it with its memory card, battery and back cover. It now looks like a phone, but it doesn't work like one.

The accompanying letter told me that the PIN-code was set to its factory default, and after giving it it in to change it to something else. This seemed pretty straightforward; I switched it on, and it told me told give in the PIN. I typed in the factory default, and it briefly lit up with the message EMERGENCY CALL NUMBERS ONLY!...then went back to asking for its PIN again. After 3 tries, it was blocked, and it was then that I found out that nowhere in the instruction manual, the accompanying letter or anywhere on the box did it mention its PUK-code to unblock it.

So here we are. I have a mobile phone, and I cannot do anything with it. Useless piece of crap.